Santa Clara County\u2019s official website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cTo have families have to go out of the county, all the way up to Marin or all the way over to Fremont when they\u2019re already in such a difficult situation just seemed unbearable to me,\u201d Pinsky said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pinsky said she called former County Supervisor Joe Simitian the morning after the meeting to express her concern regarding the lack of psychiatric aid for youth in Santa Clara.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI give him so much credit,\u201d Pinsky said. \u201cHe just never let go of this. He thought it was super important to get this facility built.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simitian first proposed the project in 2015, and a revised, more detailed plan was approved in 2021. Although construction began in 2023, the project faced construction delays due to labor shortages and exceeded its 222 million budget by nearly two times its original.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pinsky said the new facility will have an immediate impact on youth in need of psychiatric care but is just the first step in solving the county\u2019s youth mental health care problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not done,\u201d Pinsky said. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t cover all the needs in the county, but it\u2019s an enormous good start.\u201d<\/p>\n
The facility has separate floors for youth and adults. It provides medical care, psychiatric assessment and emergency crisis services. Andie Barker, a therapist at the Paly Wellness Center, said having dedicated facilities for youth is necessary to provide effective care.<\/p>\n
\u201cDifferent programs are initiated for different developmental stages of life,\u201d Barker said. \u201cDepending on what the adults might be going through, that would be very different than what a teenager would be going through. The needs would be so varied. There would have to be completely different programming.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Junior Selena Luo, co-president of the Clinical Psychology Club, said having more support options available for teens is increasingly important.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany teenagers have anxiety, depression and academic pressure,\u201d Luo said. \u201cThe increasing crisis of those pressures is definitely a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barker also said having a hospital in close proximity benefits patients\u2019 families.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do require that level of care, obviously you want to receive that care close to home, so it\u2019s accessible for your family and your support system to be involved in the care,\u201d Barker said. \u201cIt\u2019s not usually just the patient that\u2019s being treated. It\u2019s the whole family system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barker also said the facility\u2019s location is important because treatment usually continues even after patients return home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do receive care within your community, that support is also then typically available after discharge, too, so to receive support and treatment within the place that you live is ideal,\u201d Barker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barker said she\u2019s hopeful for the new facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always excited as a social worker to hear about additional care options in our community,\u201d Barker said. \u201cIt\u2019s always a win when there\u2019s additional treatment available and avenues for people to receive that treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After more than 15 years of advocacy and background work from community members and county leaders, Santa Clara\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260,8464],"class_list":{"0":"post-469503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-youth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}